Morning Muse with Dave Arnold

The Lack of Fellowship

An old Irish woman living in a crowded city said that when the weight on her heartbecame too heavy to bear, she “went and had a cup o’ tea with Father Moike.”

To the kindly priest, she poured out the burden and pain of her life and went away with a light heart and new courage.1

Acts 2:42 says of the early believers, “They continued steadfastly in fellowship.”

According to G. Campbell Morgan, “There is no richer word in the New Testament than the Greek word translated ‘fellowship.’

The root of the word is found in the statement that they ‘had all things in common.’ Fellowship is having all things in common.”2

The late Bill Bright told the story of a lone musician – a man who believed himself to be the finest musician in the world and needed no one else to produce the finest music.

Accordingly, when the curtain went up for a symphonic concert, the audience was astonished to see 70 empty chairs, with the appropriate instruments, and only one person to play them all.

Fellowship is heavenWhen the conductor’s baton signaled the start, this man ran frantically from one instrument to another, trying to keep up with the conductor.

“Of course, this is an allegory,” Bright wrote. “But isn’t that what many Christians are like?

They are content to live their Christian lives by themselves, without seeking the fellowship of others.

There is no possible way that we can exist as healthy Christians without fellowship.

In the fictional one-man orchestra above, you can imagine what the music sounded like – disconnected, uncoordinated and offbeat. That is what a Christian’s spiritual life is like in isolation from other members of the body of Christ.”3

“Fellowship is heaven, and lack of fellowship is hell; fellowship is life, and the lack of fellowship is death.”4